Society of Science, Letters and Art

The image of the Latin seal on the Society's certificate presented to members is dated MDCCCLXXXI, or 1881.[7] Its Chairman, Sir H.V. Goold, stated in 1884 that the Society had been "established for some years."[8] There are records of fellowships being granted by the Society from 1883.[4] However the earliest known Journal was published on 10 November 1884, and gives the Society's address as Addison House, 160 Holland Road, near Addison Road Station, Kensington, West London.[9][10] It functions as a prospectus for the Society, and sets out its aims and aspirations. It contains a list of its honourable representatives, its officers and its council; a list of "scientific, literary, & musical circles about to be formed;" the conditions and privileges of fellowship. It also contains an "application for admission as Fellow of the Society," with name left blank to be filled in, and pre-stamped with the chairman's facsimile signature of acceptance, and a "Formal certificate of a candidate for admission as Fellow," for recommendation, similarly pre-stamped.[11] The prospectus was followed in 1885 by a printed programme of exhibitions in the sciences and arts.[12]

One of the academic papers published in 1884 by the Society was Some notes on the stage and its influences on the education of the masses, players and playgoers etc., by Henry Blau.[13] Another of these papers was The ideographic ornamentation of Gothic buildings written in 1902 by the artist and antiquarian Thomas Tindall Wildridge.[14] This article was informed by his book, The Grotesque in Church Art.[15][16]

In 1897 the Society sent an Address to Queen Victoria on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee.[17]

The chairman and president of the society from 1882 to 1893 was the impecunious and propertyless Irish baronet Sir Henry Valentine Goold (1803–1893), the third of the Goold baronets of Oldcourt House, Cork.[3][4][18][19][20] He was born 7 July 1803 in Baker Street, Marylebone, and died in Croydon on 18 June 1893, age 89.[21][22][23][nb 1] The family motto was Deus mihi providebit, or "God will provide".[24] A grandson of the 3rd Goold baronet, and nephew of Sir Henry Valentine Goold, was Vere St. Leger Goold,[25] a tennis player and criminal who was incarcerated on Devil's Island and died there.[26]

Goold served on Cork County Grand Jury in 1842.[27] He was Deputy Lieutenant for Cork but resigned the position in 1862.[28][29] He wrote The Single Serpentine Course of the Moon Round the Sun and the Earth (A. Boot & Son, 1883).[30] In July 1874, he sold off 650 acres of his estate, in the Landed Estates Court.[31][32] In 1878 he was involved in a Court dispute with Holmwood, Row and Company.[33]

Notwithstanding any position or duties retained in Cork, by the time he died Goold had lived in West Croydon for many years.[34] The 1861 Census shows a married gentleman born in Marylebone called Henry Goold living in Pier Road, North Aylesford, Kent, with his wife Sarah, aged 35.[35] He appears unmistakably on the Census only once: in 1881, living at 8 Canterbury Road, Croydon with a fifteen-year-old servant, Jane Smith. He is 77 years old, described as a married baronet and as a property and landowner.[21] In April 1893, he was summoned before the County Court judge at Croydon to answer for an unpaid debt accrued by himself, but the judge declined to commit him to jail due to his advanced age. The York Herald made its own judgement, saying, "If he is considered too old to be made to pay his debts, many people will think he is also too old to be in a position to incur any."[34] Goold did not marry.[36] His heir was his nephew, the 4th Baronet Sir James Stephen Goold, who inherited only the title, emigrated to Australia, and worked anonymously for a railway company as a "permanent way man", or railway line maintenance man.[26][36]

Goold died in 1893, and was succeeded as president by James S. Forsyth, D.D. until at least 1894. Robert Palmer, M.A. was the Hon. Secretary in 1894.[37]

Holland Road houses similar to the Society's headquarters (No.160 was demolished)

The Hon. Secretary was Dr Edward Albert Sturman, M.A., FRSL (1840–1899), and his wife was Lady Secretary.[38][39][40] Sturman and his wife owned the Holland Road premises and the Society, and accepted all its profits, using Goold's name and rank as bait to impress and convince new paying members.[3]

Sturman's father was George Sturman, a gun-maker born in Tower Hamlets, Middlesex in 1800. His mother Sarah was born in 1804 in Bethnal Green, and Sturman was born in Hoxton. The 1841 census finds Sturman, at six months the youngest of eight children, living with his parents at 25 East Road in Tower Hamlets, Shoreditch, in the parish of St Leonard.[41] In 1851 they were occupying a house at 2 Church Row, Upper Street, in St Mary's, Islington.[42][43] By 1861 the family had moved a couple of doors along, to a room in number 4a Church Row, which was fairly crowded with artisan tenants. Sturman was by then aged 20 and a schoolmaster, still unmarried and living with his parents.[44]

In 1864 Sturman married Emma Jessup (or Webb) (1846–1918) when he was 23 and she was 18 years old. They had nine children, of whom one died young.[45][46] By 1871 Sturman was aged 30, still a schoolmaster and married to Emma aged 25, a schoolmistress born in Hackney, Whitechapel, Stepney or Mile End.[47] They had two children aged six and five years, and were living at 145 Packington Street, then a ladies' school, at St Peter's, Islington.[48] By 1881 there were eight children aged two to sixteen, of which the eldest was a civil servant clerk, and Sturman was still schoolmastering, although they had moved out of the school and were living at 68 Upper Tollington Park, Hornsey. They had moved around somewhat, as the three youngest of the children had been born in Penge, Sydenham, and Lee Place in Lewisham.[49] By 1891 the family had two servants, and most of them (less two children) were living at 160 Holland Road, South Kensington. Sturman was now Hon. Secretary of the Society and Emma was Lady Secretary. Their daughter Florence was a dead letter office clerk - a post which might have been useful at a Society which practised a form of pamphleting and received a great deal of returned mail. The other children were all clerks, except the youngest who was an apprentice electrical engineer.[50] In 1899, Sturman died.

The 1901 Census finds Emma Sturman as a widow still living with her family at 160 Holland Road. She owned the house, and was selling apartments within it. Her family appears to have been educated, stable and respectably employed. Her youngest son, Douglas, had become an electrical engineer and telephone company worker. Another son was now a civil servant and principal clerk and he had married a woman from Cape Colony.[51] By 1911, Emma at age 65 was still living at Holland Road with three spinster daughters, two female boarders and a female servant. She and her daughter Lucy Minnie were working from their nine-room house as secretary and clerk for their own private company, the nature of which is unknown.[52]

In 1884 to 1885, the vice-chairman was Sir William Robert Clayton, 6th of the Clayton baronets.

Fellows fell into three groups, and all were entitled to append the letters F.S.Sc. after their names, and wear a cap and gown. The first set were eminent scientists and artists who deserved fellowship of a learned society and there were few of these. The second group already belonged to respected learned societies, such as the Royal Society of Arts, and had been leafleted by the SSLA, paid their guineas, then in at least some cases realised that the sale of fellowships was not condoned by their own respected society. The third group were people who simply engaged in science and art; some took an examination and some paid for their fellowship.[5] A fellow proposed by the council would receive a diploma written in Latin.[53] The fellow was permitted special insignia of which the price to the wearer is unknown, and which was described as "a very handsome gold cross surrounded by a laurel wreath and having appropriate emblems in the centre."[54]

Gold medallion awarded to George Hawker, 1885

Certificate awarded to Florence K. Spencer, 1894

Johann Gottlieb Otto Tepper (1841–1923), Hon. Fellow of the Royal Society of South Australia and Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, was a botanist, schoolteacher and entomologist who was a life member of the SSLA and received its medallion in 1898.[55] American physician, surgeon, and gynaecologist Newsom Jones Pittman (1818–1893) was vice president of the North Carolina Medical Society and of the American Medical Association, besides being a Master Mason.[56] Charles Farrar Forster (1848–1894) was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and first vicar of the Church of St Michael and All Angels, Beckwithshaw, North Yorkshire, England.[57] Mr O'Donovan, FRGS, was the Parliamentary Librarian of Queensland; the Society posted his Latin diploma of Fellowship to him in 1885.[53] Mr Fremersdorf, FRGS, of East Bourke, Victoria, Australia, was appointed Honorary Representative to Washington Territory for the SSLA in 1885.[58]

The Reverend John Botheras was principal of Stafford school, and wrote sermons and articles for Bible, Christian Magazine.[59] Sarah Hutchins Killikelly (1840–1912) was a school teacher who wrote two books: Curious Questions in History, Literature, Art, and Social Life Designed as a Manual of General Information, vols I-III (1886–1900), and The History of Pittsburgh, Its Rise and Progress (Pittsburgh, Gordon Montgomery, 1906). She received an SSLA gold medallion in 1897 for her historical papers.[60] Oliver McEwan was the principal of the New Metropolitan School of Shorthand in High Holborn in 1883; in the same year he wrote Shorthand: helps to the study of phonography.[61][62] Mrs Stocken was principal of South London College in 1888.[63] Monsieur Stirn, B.A. was director of the Anglo-French College, Kettering in 1884.[64] Dr Spark was the Leeds borough organist, and he received a diploma from the Society in 1883.[4]

Besides those school children who did exceptionally well in examinations, there were Members other than Fellows who were not engaged in science or art, but who were interested in those matters. They could submit examples of their work for examination in the hope of winning a silver or gold medallion of the SSLA. A fortunate member might receive a silver-plated bronze or gilt-bronze medallion, cast with a figure of Athena, goddess of wisdom and learning, dispensing laurel wreaths and surrounded by her scientific and artistic attributes (pictured above). On the reverse the name of recipient and date of award would be engraved within a laurel wreath. George Hawker's gilt-bronze medallion weighs approximately 24 grams and is a professional and clean casting. These medallions were not, however, cast by the Royal Mint.[65]

Miss E.A. Wright was awarded a silver medal for her oil painting in 1892.[66] Florence K. Spencer received a 4th class certificate for her oil painting on 18 December 1894 (pictured right). George Hawker won a gold medallion in 1885 for an unknown work (pictured right). This could possibly be George Charles Hawker, the Australian politician. At an unknown date, J.P. Thompson of Brisbane was awarded a silver medallion for "merit in science."[67]

On 6 March 1884, The Times printed a rebuttal by Sir H.V. Goold. This reply to the Royal Society of Arts set out the aims of the Society and declared that many of its members were also members of the Society of Arts (although he did not mention that they wanted their money back).[8]

On 3 January 1894, The New Zealand Herald printed a rebuttal by the former embezzler and writer Joseph Ostler (1827–1905), alias C. Frusher Howard F.S.Sc. He was referring to similar comments which had been printed in London Truth and the Herald. He had joined in 1885, and considered it a "worthy and useful institution." He said that its headquarters at Addison House, Kensington, was a large house containing a library, museum and lecture hall. He expounded on the aims and doings of the Society, the quality of the members and their satisfaction in supporting the Society financially, themselves. He also complained of "scandalous misrepresention."[2][6][74]

Lorimer Fison was president of the anthropological section of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, and he received an offer of Fellowship from the Society which he declined.[75]